The
Heritage Front Affair
A report to the Solicitor General of Canada
December 9th, 1995
FOREWORD
Conspiracy theories endure. There are hundreds of examples of this, the
most poignant and well-known being the many conspiracies believed to be
behind the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. There is a simple
reason: it is impossible to prove a negative proposition.
Several independent groups of well-qualified people have concluded that
the Loch Ness monster does not exist. But, for true believers, these conclusions
simply show that the investigation was not sufficiently thorough, or that
the people involved were biased from the start.
Our report faces the same obstacles. That is why we described under 'Methodology'
the efforts we made to ensure that nothing remotely relevant escaped our
attention. We realize that even this will not prevent some people from
demanding another "independent" investigation, because our conclusions
may not match their preconceived convictions. There will undoubtedly be
others who, based upon the facts set out in this report, come to conclusions
that differ from ours; we certainly have no quarrel with them.
The Review Committee took the decision to investigate the Heritage Front
affair on Sunday, August 14, 1994. The investigation commenced the following
day. Sometime later, at the request of the Reform Party of Canada, we expanded
our usual investigative mandate to include an examination of allegations
concerning the infiltration of the Reform Party. We followed a variety
of leads in this area. Almost all our staff, and we ourselves, have been
pre-occupied with the inquiry ever since.
What sets this report apart from all the other reports we have sent to
the Solicitor General is the fact that most of it, perhaps all of it, will
be made public. This will occur because the allegations against CSIS were
so serious that the Security Intelligence 'system' established by Parliament
in 1984 was in danger of losing the public's trust. Readers of the "Heritage
Front Affair" will be able to judge for themselves the effectiveness
of the accountability procedures put in place by the CSIS Act, and
the Review Committee's role in that structure.
The report contains quite a mÈlange of information. Much of it is
objective fact based upon a thorough cross-checking of sensitive information,
Source reports, CSIS files, and interviews. Some of it is presumed fact
because of the preponderance of evidence. Some of it is what we believe
to be the most likely correct version of events based upon our judgement
of the weight to be given to each individual's evidence. We have consciously
limited the report in two areas only:
- we have tried to avoid providing too much information about CSIS' methods
of operation so as not to endanger the Service's effectiveness in the future;
and
- we have not broken the law, section 18 of the CSIS Act, by identifying
the CSIS Source who was active in the white supremacist milieu.
Because of the vagaries of our two official languages, the personal
pronouns "he" in the english version and "she"
in the french version are used when referring to sources. These pronouns
are used without regard to the actual sex of the sources.
The last chapter of the report contains our findings. We took great care
in reaching these conclusions and, for our part, are confident that they
are well-founded.
Finally, because there are passages in this report that could be construed
as impugning the characters of certain individuals, we have attempted to
contact all of them, given them the nature of passages which refer to them,
and taken full account of their comments. In some cases, their comments
have led to changes in the text, in others, a footnote puts their objections
or clarifications on the record.